A Shaun Cassidy Site
Dedicated To His Work BEHIND The Camera!!
NEVER FORGET
ALL GAVE SOME....
SOME GAVE ALL
Whether we realize it or not, on September 11, 2001 all of our lives changed. For some it was a life altering change.
Whether you live in NYC, Pennsylvania, Virginia, DC or Peoria...everyone's lives were affected. We see it in our lives every day; from the way we board airplanes to perhaps looking at a person carrying a strange looking bag. No one was left untouched by the events of September 11, 2001.
I was deeply affected in a very personal way. My cousin Pete and a friend, Larry, were firefighters on that fateful day. Below are pictures and bios of them. They both perished when the towers collapsed.
Peter "Pete" Carroll
Painter Who Cared
He had 19 years in the Fire Department. One more, and they were off to retire in California. They depended on each other, but last January, Ms. Carroll came to depend on him in very profound ways. She fell ill with a neurological disorder with no cure. It is a rapid, ravaging affliction that attacks the soft tissues.
Mr. Carroll, 42, started to cook for his wife. He carried her to bed. Sometimes he washed her back. This summer, on the hottest day of the year, he came home to Staten Island from the Squad 1 firehouse in Brooklyn to see her in the backyard, frozen in a chair in the blazing sun. He saw that and wept. "I had a beautiful fireman to rescue me," Ms. Carroll said. "Now I don't want to move at all."
In a contorted way, Mr. Carroll's wife is one of the lucky survivors. She has his ashes and his wedding band.
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 28, 2001.
Lawrence Veling
Father's 'Blue' Period
Last Christmas, Lawrence Veling found he had a knack for drawing characters from the Nickelodeon show "Blue's Clues." He had never sketched or doodled, and couldn't draw anything else.
But for his 2-year-old son Kevin, he could churn out remarkable likenesses of Blue, Mr. Salt, Mrs. Pepper, Slippery Soap and Tickety Tock in rapid succession as Kevin cried "More!" Even the neighbors were impressed when they saw Mr. Veling's chalk drawings on the sidewalk.
Mr. Veling, 44, worked two jobs ‹ one as a fireman with Engine 235 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and one as a high school custodian in Manhattan ‹ so his scarce time at home was devoted to his three children, Ryan, 7, Cynthia, 6, and Kevin.
He colored in coloring books. He played Junior Monopoly. He went to school in his full uniform for fire safety week.
"I knew my kids would grow up to be great adults because they had a great father," said Dianne Veling, his wife.
Mrs. Veling says her own sketches of Blue's Clues characters are inconsistent. "A couple of times I was impressed with myself, but I forgot how I did it."
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 19, 2001.
There were 343 firefighters killed on that day; and while thousands of others also perished, I find it amazing that these men went INTO the building...knowing that the results could be deadly. This is something they do every day of their lives.
The song that is playing on this page, I feel, perfectly reflects the losses that thousands of children, wives, husbands and other loved ones suffered. The song, "You're Still Missing" by Bruce Springsteen is available on his album "The Rising". I just hope Mr. Springsteen and his record company don't mind me using it for this one day on this site. To me, it fits the feelings of loss suffered whether you were personally affected by September 11th or not. Life goes on...we can rebuild...but those that perished are still missing. Thank you Mr. Springsteen for your beautiful song. (Update: Unfortunately, it seems the music on this page is not working very well. I apologize.)
The slide show below is pictures that I personally took in October, 2001. This was, obviously, before they tore down all the buildings. These images may be extremely difficult for some to view and, for that I apologize. But we must never forget. Sooner or later, new buildings will be built and no one should ever forget what happened that day simply because the devastation is no longer visible.
Below the slide show you will also find my personal recollections of September 11, 2001. I have included a comment box at the top of this page and, if you are so inclined, you may add your reflections of that day or make any comments you wish about this page. This page is being substituted for the usual main homepage for just a few days. I may or may not keep it available after September 11th...I haven't made that decision yet.
Speaking of rebuilding....as many know, the site of the World Trade Center is STILL awaiting rebuilding. I won't get into the politics of it, but needless to say it appears that if we want the memorial built we are going to have to fund it ourselves. A site is now available for donations at www.buildthememorial.org. I urge everyone to give whatever they can to get this memorial built.
My personal recollections of September 11, 2001
It was a beautiful, cloudless day...you couldn't wish for a better day. I do temp work and was supposed to be working that week. Because my children were starting school that week, I decided not to work until Thursday.
I had dropped my 2 oldest children off for their 2nd day of school. I went home with my then 3 year old and began my usual routine which usually included keeping the television on while I went about my day. Unfortunately, that day the cable company had decided it was going to be installing new cable wires in my neighborhood. Anyone with cable was out of luck until about 3:00 p.m. while they worked...all cable service was out in the neighborhood.
About 9:00 a.m. I heard some shouting coming from my next-door neighbor's house. Her teenage sons were making so much racket that I went over to investigate. When her oldest son opened the door I asked if they were alright and HE was the one that told me what had been going on. He pulled me into the house to show me the events unfolding on the television (they had satellite and therefore were not affected by the blackout). I stood there horrified watching both World Trade Towers burning. Then they showed the footage of the plane hitting the second tower. We all knew instantly that this was not any type of accident. This was intentional.
I went back home and awoke my husband (who works nights) to alert him to what was going on. We turned on the only working television in the house; in the kitchen which was a tv with rabbit ears. We watched in stunned silence as the images of the towers burning and the repeated images of the plane crashing were displayed on the screen. We saw people falling from the upper floors....it was horrible. We began to get images of the NYC emergency services answering the call. We prayed for them and for the friends, family and neighbors we knew who worked in and around the towers. I also thought that perhaps God had smiled on me that day. When the first plane hit the towers, I would have been just arriving at my temp job at 1 Liberty Plaza...directly across from the towers.
Reports came in confirming our suspicions that this was not an accident, but yet another terrorist attack on the towers. We were all very afraid. I noticed the cable truck at the end of my block and ran down and told the technician that he HAD to restore cable right away. He looked at me like I was nuts until I told him what was going on. He went up the ladder and reconnected the cable.
We got images just as Tower 2 began to crumble. Then the second tower came down...I knew what I had to do.
I got in my car to pick up my kids at school. I took several mothers from my block with me, dropping them off at their school while I continued on to my children's school. When I got there, the principal was trying to assuage us all by telling us that there were several children who had fathers that were firefighters and that they didn't want to scare those children too much. I walked up to the principal, told him that while I felt for those children, I wanted MY children with ME. He tried to tell me that they were probably better off where they were and I told him that I didn't feel the same. My children went to a parochial school and I was definitely not comfortable with a church and a school as I thought they could be possible targets. If anything further were to happen in NYC, I wanted my children with me. He sent the secretary to get my children.
On the way home, we picked up those same mothers and their children and brought everyone home safely. I must admit though that we must have looked like a clown car when we arrived on my block and unloaded. In my minivan made to hold 7, we had 5 adults and 7 children!
Rumors were abundant. The water supply was in danger...fill up everything you can; there was another plane heading toward the Empire State Building.
The reality was much scarier. By now we had also learned that a plane had hit the Pentagon and another plane (supposedly aimed at the White House or Capitol Building in DC) had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. So many lives lost.
We heard from several friends that they were safe. We even joked with our friend Joe who had narrowly missed being blown to smithereens at the bombing of the Towers in 1993 that if he were a cat, he was now down 2 lives and had only 7 left.
Our children were outside playing, innocently unaware of what was really happening around them. They came in carrying pieces of paper. Paper with data on them; letterhead. We followed them outside to see where they were getting it from. It had all come from the World Trade Center. The impact hit us hard. We walked up to the Avenue a block away from us and saw hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper scattered all over. When the towers collapsed, the paper had been taken on the wind and had landed here. We looked out over "the weeds" as we affectionately call it. Our view had been of the two towers standing tall; symbolizing our city's greatness. Now all we saw was smoke.
The news was slower in coming about firefighters, police and others we knew. Were they trapped? Were they alive?
With Pete, they found his hand. With Larry, they found nothing.
I went to more funerals/memorials between September and December, 2001 than I ever want to go to. So many children left fatherless. So many wives left without their husbands. Parents should never have to bury their children.
I began working again full-time a month after the attacks. A firm that I had worked for as a temp had their secretary leave after the events of September 11th and they asked me to come work for them...a block away from where the World Trade Center had once stood. I was unprepared for the sights and smells that accosted me. There was still devastation everywhere you looked. The process of clearing the site was in full swing. Even after a month, there were still fires burning under the rubble. The smell, however, was the worst. It is something that I will never forget. People walked around in surgical masks. We saw the "readers" that were supposedly measuring the air quality. We were told it was safe. It's only now that we're finding out it wasn't.
I still work in downtown Manhattan about 1 week per month. I find myself still looking for the towers that should be there. They were a center; a lifeline; a symbol. When you fly a plane into New York it is a sad sight as you see the Manhattan skyline and realize the huge gaping hole there is in it.
Five years have passed, but the memories will live forever in our hearts and minds. We miss our loved ones as much today as we did five years ago.
